Without Fear: The Dragon Cycle
by SirenoftheStorm
Summary: A series of pieces about Mistress Ching. Contains Chinese history, cute kids, foreshadowing, and cold-blooded intensity. Begun as part of a 'Magnificent Garden Party' project on the Broken Compass Forum and continued upon request.
1. Without Fear

Okay, before you read this, it is a sequel to Chapter 10 in the series "Mothers of the Caribbean" by A Magnificent Garden Party, a collaboration among the writers on the Broken Compass forum to see that the unmentioned mothers of the PotC characters we love get the credit they deserve. Please read that first- it will make the next parts so much more meainingful. You can find it in my Favorite Stories section if you don't want to search. My chapter, "Without Fear," is about Mistress Ching's mother.

Mistress Ching was based on a real historical figure, Ching Shih, the woman who led one of the largest and most powerful- not to mention ruthless and bloodthirsty- pirate fleets in history. Mistress Ching's younger life is shrouded in uncertainty. Her original name is not even recorded; she's known in historical texts as Ching Shih, or "widow of Ching." All that is really known about her youth is that she was a prostitute on one of the floating brothels of Canton before her marriage to the pirate captain Ching Yi. Upon his death, she took control of the pirate coalition her husband had created and held them together for five years through extensive political manipulation and negotiation. During this time, she led them to victory in numerous battles against not only trading ships but the Chinese government itself before finally accepting a formal pardon and retiring.

Now go read Chapter 10 of MotC before you read the next chapter! I promise you won't regret it.


	2. Fearless

If anyone deserves credit for this being written, it's the following people: Nytd, FreedomoftheSeas, damsel-in-stress, Jennifer Lynn Weston, and mrs. tinamaria-funfunfun, because it was they who encouraged and convinced me to write more about Yu's dragon-daughter and the fascinating woman she became.

I hope this continuation, which takes up the thread of the story fifteen years later, does their expectations justice.

Oh, and "dragonchild" is actually a pet name I use sometimes, along with "wolfling," because endearments like sweetie, honey, and kitten don't really apply to my friends. It seemed uniquely appropriate in this case.

* * *

Li-Hua knelt before the ancestor shrine, the faint trails of tears visible on her face as she lit a stick of incense before the freshly carved tablet with her mother's name on it that had been added to the shrine only that morning.

"I'm sorry, mama. I'm sorry I failed you. I'm so sorry," she repeated in a whisper, over and over, as if it were a mantra that would somehow cleanse her of her unworthiness as a daughter. She could still see it in her mind, the stark pallor of her mother's face as her pained grimace finally went slack, the blood everywhere, soaking the sheets and mattress, dripping onto the floor mats, running over her own hands and those of Mei-Fen as they fought to try to save the lives of their mother and their newly born brother.

Mei-Fen had been able to save the infant. Li-Hua had not been able to save Yu. Their mother had finally born a son, and died less than an hour later. Li-Hua clenched her hands, strong, work-calloused hands; stupid, useless hands. Her lips framed the litany of apology over and over, more tears rising to her eyes as she watched the incense smoke spiral up to the roof. After a while, she heard soft footsteps. She didn't move. She knew who it would be.

"There you are." Mei-Fen stepped into the shrine and knelt beside her sister, wrapping an arm around her and hugging her. "Oh, _mei mei__… _dragonchild _…_ you mustn't blame yourself. There was nothing more you could have done. She knows that." _Nuhai-long_, dragonchild, had been her sister's pet name for her for as long as Li-Hua could remember. She supposed it was because her given name, Pearl Blossom, sounded as if it described a completely different person. She leaned her head against her sister's shoulder, taking silent comfort from her presence. Mei-Fen's eyes scanned the altar and lit on an offering that made her gasp.

"_Mei mei_, you didn't—"

"Of course I didn't steal them," Li-Hua said, voice tight and defensive. "I would never dishonor our mother in such a way. I bought them."

"Bought them?" Mei-Fen looked at her sister, aghast. "With what money? You had no money!"

"I got money," she answered shortly. "I didn't steal the money, either. I won it." She jerked her head at the expensive garland of bright red flowers that lay among the other offerings. "And I bought them." Mei-Fen shut her eyes and sighed.

"You must not gamble while you stay under my husband's roof. He greatly disapproves of it. I don't like it either. You know it is an unwise and dangerous pastime." Mei-Fen looked at her sister with reproachful dark eyes.

"It is not unwise, because I do not lose," Li-Hua replied, meeting her sister's stare unwaveringly. "And they cannot discover how I cheat, so I always win."

"It is wrong," Mei-Fen insisted. Li-Hua shook her head, began to lift her hands into the air, then put them back down, folding them in her lap. She stared at them as she spoke.

"No, _da jie,_ what is wrong is that I live in your house now and can contribute nothing. What is wrong is that with two more relatives to support, your husband struggles to keep food on our plates and you cut up your spare clothing because you cannot afford to buy clothes for your children and I sit under your roof, eating your food, warming myself by your fire, when I could earn enough money not to be a burden on you! If you will not let me gamble, then let me work! I am as strong as a boy; I could do it. It would bring a little money, it would be _something_—" Mei-Fen was shaking her head, a kind, sympathetic look on her face.

"Dragonchild, you must think of the future. Working like a boy in the fields would bring a little money, but not enough, and it would be a stain on your reputation. You must keep your reputation, or else you will not find a husband to support you. You need merely to act as a young woman should, and you will not lack for offers. You are an appealing girl. Your hair shines like water and you are strong, but graceful. Your marriage will leave us with only Qing to support, and he is little yet."

"Don't you understand?" Li-Hua whispered desperately. "The future is _all_ that I think of. This way of life that we all live, it need not go on forever. Here, we toil and struggle, year after year, while the rest of China grows rich all around us." She waved an arm expansively, knocking over neither the incense burner nor any of the offerings in her impulsive motion, for Mei-Fen spoke truly in describing her as graceful. "The cities and ports flow with silver from trade with the barbarian nations of the West. The world is changing! Mere artisans and merchants are becoming as rich as the Emperor himself!"

"And you? You are no artisan or merchant_," _Mei-Fen reminded her sister gently. "Even if you made it as far as one of these cities of yours, you'd be an uneducated peasant girl among strangers with no family there to turn to for aid. At least if you stay here, you'll have our family, our ancestors, soon, a husband… one day, children. There is a life for you here, not a fantasy of smoke and glitter where you live like an empress and coins shower from the sky, but a _real_ life, one you can reach out and touch. A real life with those who love you. 'To believe in one's dreams is to spend all of one's life asleep.'"

Li-Hua said nothing as they returned to her sister's husband's house, hating the proverb, hating this horrible land under her feet that ground dreams to dust in its granite teeth. Hating it all, and loving at the same time. For she loved her little niece and nephew, who ran to throw their arms around her and show her the 'house' they'd made out of a chair and a broken old table by draping their bedsheet over them. She loved her brother-in-law for laughing instead of scolding them, for donating his hat to serve as a pretend hearth, and for greeting Mei-Fen with a glance and a brief caress of her hand that said more than words how much he loved her. She loved her little brother, Qing, still so young still that he was barely a person yet. And she loved Mei-Fen, her beautiful, warmhearted sister, her first and dearest friend.

_You will have a fine house,_ she promised them in her mind, _and meat on your table, and hens in your yard, and bright paintings hanging on your walls. Your children will have toys and dolls and candy. You will eat fresh peaches and wear gowns of silk, my sister, and your husband will have a whole shelf full of books to read and drink his tea from a cup inlaid with gold. Our little brother will tend farmland that he himself holds the deed to, and be beholden to no one. You'll have all the things that you deserve that no one has ever been able to give you, and more. _

Before she left that night, she quietly woke Anming, her little niece, and put something in her hand. It was a bracelet of old wooden beads strung on fraying cord that bore several knots where it had broken and been tied back together.

"This is for you, until I can send you a better one. You have to tell your parents something for me when I am gone," she whispered to the little girl. "Thank your father for his generosity when you have little enough to spare, and for the comfort it gives me knowing that he'll be taking care of you, your mother, your brother and Qing while I'm gone. Tell your mother that I love her and that I'll come back home someday after I've made something of my life. And tell them both that I'll send money when I can." She stroked Anming's silky hair as she hugged her goodbye. She carried no bags, for she was taking nothing with her. There was no food to spare in the house, and the clothes she wore were her best and sturdiest. She'd tucked a knife into her belt, but it was her own. Anything else she needed, she'd have to find, make, steal, or borrow along the way.

"But how will you get money? What will you do?" Anming asked, catching Li-Hua's sleeve as she turned to go. Li-Hua smiled as she answered, but her voice was low and serious.

"I'll do what ever I have to. I love you, _baobei_. I promise you'll see me again someday."

-

Chinese glossary

_Mei mei_- little/younger sister

_Nuhai- _female child or daughter, _Long_- dragon

_Da jie-_ big/older sister

_Baobei_- sweetheart

^If you speak Chinese and spot a mistake in these, please let me know!


	3. Ruthless

I did a lot of thinking about this chapter (more time thinking than I spent editing, honestly, so if you spot anything that looks funny, be sure to point it out in a comment.) It's the part I've always wondered about, really.

How did she go from being a whore to the wife of a powerful pirate? Men do not generally marry their whores. Their mistresses, occasionally, but in this situation, even marriage to a mistress would raise a few questions. After all, this is the captain of a pirate fleet who is rising in power, and who could have used a marriage to cement the bonds of the alliance he is leading. Instead, he marries a prostitute, and she becomes not only his wife, but the one who inherited his authority after his death, not a small feat for a woman in China at any point in history, let alone this one.

Then I realized that I was going about it from the wrong end. What I needed to ask was not, "Why did Ching Yi marry a prostitute?" but "How would Li-Hua have managed to secure herself a position at the right hand of a cruel and powerful pirate lord?" And once I saw that, the question answered itself.

There is one glaring historical inaccuracy: Mahjongg had not been invented in the time period during which this takes place. I figured using an era-appropriate Chinese gambling game that no one has ever heard of before would just complicate things too much, so I used a more familiar one instead.

This chapter is **rated T **for mentions of violence and some strongly implied but non-graphic sex.

* * *

*

The Pirate Lord Ching Yi stood before the hatch at the end of the hallway, surprised by the sudden electric tingle of anticipation that crept across his skin as he reached out to unlock it with the key the madam had given him. He shook his head slightly, trying to shed the feeling. Yi wanted his senses fully present for this assignation. He had been too long forced to choose one of the same three whores, the only three on this floating brothel that met his standards, and he was sick unto death of them, of their jasmine-oiled hair and their fake smiles and their frightened eyes. But this time, there was a new one, and the madam's answers to his sharp questioning had intrigued him.

"She is young?" The madam had nodded, the wrinkles on her face deepening.

"Young, yes. Twenty-three, she says. Looks younger."

"Without sores or rotting teeth? No disease?" he demanded.

"She's healthy. Didn't even get seasick her first time out like most of the girls," the old woman admitted brusquely.

"Why do you frown like that? Is she ugly? Unpleasant? Disrespectful?" The madam shook her head quickly.

"No. She is everything you like, honored sir, and you will not be disappointed. I frown only because she has beaten me at Mahjongg and I owe her money." Yi burst out laughing so long and heartily at that as she glared at him.

"Then she has avenged my first mate and several others," he said, a hint of a smile lingering around his eyes, "For you have cheated them at the gaming table before. They were stupid to play against a whoremistress, but I think they must be stupider still to lose to one whose whores can beat her at her own game."

"She shouldn't have won," the madam said, her lips pursed as if she had tasted sour vinegar. "There should have been no way for her to win."

"I don't care, you fetid old dog," Yi told her, annoyed, for he had finished discussing the subject. "Be content with this-" he put a few coins in her palm and her dark eyes glittered at the amount—"And do not disturb us for anything save if my ship is harmed. I've been hungering for something new."

Now he fitted the key into the lock and turned it, then entered, shutting the hatch behind him. She was tall for a woman, he noted, and wearing a dressing gown of silk that had been dyed the color of ripe plums. She stood with her back to him, lighting a cone of incense in an incense burner of the variety specially made by an artist in Guangzhou, to be safely used aboard ships without risk of fire. Yi had one in his own cabin. His curiosity sharpened as he caught the spicy scent of Dragon's Blood, an unusual choice for a whore.

Though she must have been aware of his presence, she did not speak or turn around. Instead, when she finished lighting the incense, she undid the knot of her dressing gown and let it slide off her shoulders and then further, to fall with a whispery sound into a pool of silk at her feet. Yi sucked in his breath at the effect—calculated and striking—as the motion bared an intricate tattoo that swirled from the nape of her neck to nearly the base of her spine. It was a dragon, inked in black and green, serpentine curves on smooth golden skin that glowed in the lamplight. He walked up to her and traced a line with his finger, feeling her muscles tense slightly at the contact. His touch followed the line up to the nape of her neck, and he pulled her long hair out of the simple knot she had it up in. It flowed over his hands—soft, shiny, darker than midnight. She wore no perfumed oils, only the scent of her own clean skin. She did not speak as he touched her, her breathing slow and measured as the pirate lord looked her over as he would any newly captured treasure, finally turning her around to look down into her face.

Her bearing was not disrespectful, but neither did she lower her eyes, letting his gaze bore into their shadowy depths and find what he would there. He liked that. He ran his fingers down the smooth curve of her cheek, tracing the soft line of her neck and lower, his eyes growing dark with approval, a slight curve of his lips.

All he wanted, he took.

Afterwards, she bid him to turn over and kneaded the soreness and tension from his muscles with strong, deft hands. Then she lay beside him, molding her body to his, her hair like cool silk against his bare skin as he rested there among the cushions and tangled bedclothes. His desire returned presently, and he had her again. In the warm aftermath of twice sated desire, he spoke to her, of his ship, the spoils they had last taken, the legacy of his family and his intentions to form an alliance between the numerous pirate fleets of the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean. She listened to it all with dark, glittering eyes, not interrupting but drinking it in. He liked that.

"Your whoremistress says you beat her at Mahjongg," he broke off in the middle of describing a battle to say abruptly.

"Yes," she said, her lips curving upwards for a fraction of a moment, the shadow of a smile, barely noticeable even to the pirate's sharp eyes. "I did."

"You beat her despite the fact that she cheated," he elaborated. "I'd like to know how." She shrugged her golden shoulders.

"I cheated too."

He liked that too, very much.

"Would you cheat if you played against me?" he asked. She smiled coyly.

"Probably. Would you catch me, if I cheated? What would the payment be?" A spark lit in his eyes as he saw what she was implying.

"I'd have to decide when I caught you." He paused. "Do you have—" she nodded and went to a chest braced securely in one corner, not bothering with her wrap. The inked dragon shifted with her movements as she knelt to take an ivory Mahjongg set out of the chest.

"We must settle on the odds," she said as they set up the tiles. "If you catch me cheating, the game is over and you claim whatever prize you wish. If you do not catch me, and I lose, you claim whatever prize you wish." She paused. "How good a player are you, Ching Yi?"

"I am very good," he told her. It was not a lie.

"If you do not catch me cheating, and I win, you take me with you on your ship, as your companion, when you go."

The pirate lord's eyes widened slightly at her daring. "Companion?"

"I would have food, a place in your bed, and a small share of your profits. Unless you wished otherwise, I would bear the touch of no man save you. I would work at what tasks you thought suitable." She met his gaze, a challenge in her eyes. "Do you agree to the stakes?"

"Yes," he said slowly, with a smile. A bold one, she was. She scarcely had a chance of winning, but he liked her daring. "Yes, I agree."

He found himself enjoying the game. She was a tough opponent, and both the fast pace of the game and the unself-conscious way she lounged nude on the cushions as they played were stimulating in more ways than one. By the time the game was nearing its end, he'd not been able to catch her cheating, but probability and the pieces already played indicated that the game was going to go to him nevertheless.

And then, quite without warning, she laid down a winning hand of tiles.

"You _did_ cheat, didn't you?" he asked her, half-angry, half-impressed.

"I always cheat," she replied, pushing her hair behind her ears and gathering up the tiles. He reached out and caught her wrists, stopping her hands motions. He could crush the fine bones of her wrists with the simple clench of a fist. She looked delicate in his grasp, her skin pale against the dark tan of his hands. Slowly he laid her down across the game board and had her right there, taking her hard and fast, lust, wonder, and fury mingled. This time, her pleasure was not feigned, and he found an unexpected satisfaction in her gasps and murmurs.

"Another game," he demanded as they lay there, entwined, catching their breaths. "With your robe on this time. No distractions."

"And the odds?" she breathed, unafraid.

"If I win, you forfeit the prize of our last game and remain here… though I assure you, you _will_ see me again." His eyes were dark and devouring. "If I catch you cheating, you come back to my ship with me—but as my slave. And if you win, and I don't catch you cheating…" He paused. "What would you ask, then, as your prize?"

"If I win, and you don't catch me cheating," the young woman replied slowly, lingering over the words, considering, tasting them, "Then I come back to your ship with you—as your wife." Yi's mouth fell open.

"Why, you conniving little bitch…"

"Is it agreed?" she asked him evenly.

His voice held an edge: of anger, of excitement, of distrust. He nodded. "Yes. It's agreed."

The game stretched longer this time, fiercer. Yi was satisfied to see his opponent beginning to lose her composure, her expression no longer remaining smooth but revealing glimpses of emotion, fear, hope. He fixed his eyes on her face, keeping his own carefully blank.

And she won.

Almost immediately, he realized what she had done. She'd played him again. The expressions were a lure, diverting his eyes from what her hands were doing. He cursed her silently as she gathered up the tiles. Then suddenly, she paused, and turned to look at him.

"Will you ask for one last game?"

"What odds?" he asked in a grating voice that was barely his own.

"If you win, I forfeit my last prize and accompany you not as your wife, but as a companion. If you lose, you make me your second in command. And if you catch me cheating…" she smiled slightly and tilted her head upwards, baring the smooth line of her neck, running her fingertips lightly over the soft golden skin. "... you can slit my throat."

He shook his head. "If I win, I beat you bloody and leave you here, whore. Those are my odds. Play by them or not," She was silent for several long moments. Her eyes closed and she took several deep breaths in and out. Yi was unsure if she were praying or merely clearing her mind.

"I accept."

It had been a game until now; this time, it was a war. No flirtation passed between them, no words save those necessary in the game. His eyes did not leave her hands. If she thought he'd be soft enough to spare her life when he caught her playing her tricks, she was wrong. He could already see her blood soaking into the planks of the cabin floor. He might not have demanded her life as forfeit, had he laid the odds, but she had wagered it and he would not hesitate to take it. His eyes measured every movement of her slender fingers on the game tiles, waiting, waiting.

There was no fumbling, no subtle palming of tiles, no sleight of hand, and he knew the tiles had not been marked; he'd inspected each one with hawk eyes as he'd shuffled them. They both lay down their final hands.

She had won.

A woman with the coldness to prostitute herself, the courage to meet his eyes when he looked at her, the skill to cheat a cheater so flawlessly that it could not be detected, the arrogance to pit her wits against those of a pirate, the ruthless desperation to wager her life in a game with a killer. His wife. His second-in-command. And he didn't know her name.

"I put it aside so as not to cast shame on my family," she replied when he asked, gathering her posessions and stowing them in the sea chest as she spoke. "Perhaps someday I will take it up again. Until then…" She turned to smile at him, a softer smile than he'd seen from her before. "…Call me love. Call me dragonchild. Call me pirate."

Later, much later, as they lay in his bunk, falling asleep, Yi spoke in the dark.

"How you cheated, that last time—will you tell me?"

His young bride nestled closer in the dark, pressing her skin against his, eyes shut, as she whispered, "In the last game… I didn't."


End file.
